One thing which might sway the leading is column width. How wide are your columns? 8pt is pretty small.

3.2917 in

Personally, 8/10pt is fine, but because it's a small point size, I'd probably go with the extra leading.

That’s a wide measure for 8pt, how much copy is there, how are you separating paragraphs, how are you printing it (if you are printing), so many questions, my instinct is that 11pt is required.

Tim

I don't exceed the "x" height of the lowercase as a rule for leading.

Maybe these examples might help, this is what a typical page would look like minus images, etc. For now I'm stuck with the font, page size and column width.

http://www.mediafire.com/?emsek22uvnl
http://www.mediafire.com/?aneceimfd4v

Thank you all for your input!